Should the UFO Gatekeepers Get Amnesty? Why NPI Says No
Robert Bigelow wants amnesty for the people who kept the secret. Danny Sheehan, who has been asked to draft the racketeering complaint against them, explains why NPI will not support a blanket grant.
The occasion is a pair of long interviews Robert Bigelow gave to the journalist George Knapp in August 2026 — his first extended public account of a meeting with President Trump. Bigelow says he spent roughly 75 minutes in the Oval Office in February, one of seven subjects he brought, and that he asked the president to publicly confirm that a non-human intelligence has been present on Earth for a long time. He declined to say how Trump responded. Sheehan works through what Bigelow did and did not say: that he refers to the craft consistently as vehicles carrying organic beings; that a very small number of people across government agencies and private aerospace firms hold the actual secrets; and that those people, in Bigelow’s account, have had direct dealings with living non-humans. Bigelow also declined to name companies, locations, or produce evidence.
The reason Sheehan is responding at length is that Bigelow telephoned him. NPI has been asked to prepare a federal criminal racketeering complaint against the legacy group, and Sheehan was also asked by the House Oversight Committee to draft the 58-page disclosure bill. Bigelow, by Sheehan’s account, wanted two things: amnesty for the people in that group, and the removal of the eminent domain provision — the clause that would let the government reclaim materials and any technology developed from them by private contractors. Sheehan says he told Bigelow he was open to discussing what role the aerospace corporations played, and that the provision stays.
The heart of the episode is the argument against a blanket grant. Sheehan’s objection is partly about legal fiction: the legacy group’s members understood themselves to be acting for the United States government, but the government they answered to was not one Congress knew about, which is precisely the problem. And it is partly about precedent — he points to Abu Ghraib, and to the fact that no one was prosecuted after the Church Committee, as the pattern he expects to see repeated. He allows that a genuinely minor infraction might warrant a pardon; he does not allow that the serious conduct alleged should be forgiven wholesale, and he argues the decision should not rest with any single president. His alternative is that the complaint be prepared, submitted, and tested by the ordinary standards, with the public informed about what is actually alleged.
About the claims discussed here
Robert Bigelow’s statements were made in interviews with George Knapp released in August 2026. They are his own account. By his own description he declined to say how the president responded to him, and declined to name companies, identify locations, or provide supporting evidence; none of it has been independently confirmed. This page reports what he said and Danny Sheehan’s response to it — the New Paradigm Institute is not asserting the underlying claims.
Background: summary of the Bigelow interviews and their evidentiary gaps
I was perfectly open to having intelligent discussions about the role that the aerospace corporations had played in this. But what we’re not open to is blanket amnesty.
What’s discussed
2:18 UFO disclosure update
5:19 What Robert Bigelow is revealing
5:44 Should UFO insiders get amnesty?
6:52 Bigelow’s 75-minute meeting with Trump
8:19 What Bigelow wanted Trump to tell the world
10:16 Gatekeepers and alleged contact with ETs
11:10 Why presidents are kept out of the loop
13:33 The Roswell crash debris story
14:39 Recovered craft, bodies and living ETs
15:30 The UFO technology arms race
19:55 Claims of humans aboard UFOs
21:07 “We have never been in control”
22:54 What would we ask an ET civilization?
24:16 Why ETs “do not trust us”
27:06 How have alleged captured ETs been treated?
30:45 The consciousness question
31:42 Who should represent humanity?
34:03 Congress and the UFO review board
35:34 Should the gatekeepers be pardoned?
37:19 Negotiating with an ET civilization
40:19 Russia’s alleged reverse-engineered weapon
41:34 Skinwalker Ranch and another dimension
43:57 Danny responds to Bigelow on amnesty
46:42 Why NPI opposes blanket amnesty
49:24 What should happen instead
52:12 Closing, and what’s next
Timestamps open the episode on YouTube at that moment.
Key passages
On the phone call that prompted this
“Bigelow knows that our New Paradigm Institute has been asked to prepare the federal criminal racketeering act complaint against the legacy group people, and called me and wanted to get me to agree that there should be amnesty for the people from the legacy group.”
On what he understood Bigelow to be saying
“I understood that he was conveying to me that everything that he and other people in the private aerospace corporations have been doing has been being done at the behest of actual US government officials. That was how they perceived it.”
On the problem with that
“They perceived the people in this legacy group as being US government officials, even though the official United States government doesn’t know anything about them. The United States Congress doesn’t know anything about them.”
On what NPI is and is not open to
“I was perfectly open to having intelligent discussions about the role that the aerospace corporations had played in this, and taking that into account in the crafting of any ultimate legislation. … But what we’re not open to is blanket amnesty for all these people.”
On the pattern this would repeat
“This is that same ongoing plea on the part of the people that are doing things that they think are more or less in the interest of the national security of the United States — that somehow they’re immunized against the application of the laws.”
The position
“Our position at the New Paradigm Institute is that we do not support blanket amnesty.”
Related from the Learning Library
Is the U.S. Shooting Down UAP? — the previous episode, on the legal stakes of an acknowledged program.
What Would Actually Protect a UAP Whistleblower? — the statute NPI drafted, and how it differs from amnesty.
Join Citizens for Disclosure — the pledge-card campaign running to November 3.
Write Directly to Congress
The Congressional Disclosure Actions campaign tracks legislative efforts to compel transparency from the U.S. government on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP). Here, we focus on actions citizens can take to influence elected officials — from supporting UAP legislation to contacting your representative and attending hearings. This is the movement's policy pressure point, and your voice matters.